Search Icon in Apple SDK Event — Local Contacts or Exchange Global Addresses?

Image from Engadget Mobile

A lot of people have been poring over screenshots from the iPhone Software Roadmap event — our own Chad Garrett saw evidence that there might be Task/ToDo functionality built into iCal. The other shot that’s been making the rounds is the one above, where you can clearly see a magnifying glass at the top of the “scrolling strip” in the contacts app. The current speculation is that it will finally allow us to “Type to find” a contact rather than have to scroll through the list. That’s what I want, but Pocketnow has just posted up an editorial with this little tidbit:

However, none of the internet communities made mention of how this may be a function of the integration of Microsoft function; rather, these sites just mention it as an Apple update. [...] However, thinking back to the contacts search, perhaps this is a Microsoft innovation related to server searching ability for contacts and emails.

AHA! We know that Apple already told us we’d be able to search through an Exchange server’s Global Address list, and I wondered how exactly it would work. On Windows Mobile a search just automatically scans through both your local and the Exchange list — with luck it will do the same on the iPhone. It’s possible, though, that all we’ll get is a separate search of Exchange with that icon. Windows Mobile uses very similar databases as Exchange so a common search is likely much easier to implement than it would be on the iPhone.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that search icon might not give us the contact search functionality we’ve been jonesing for.